Growing up

The past few weeks have been crazy, what with finishing the early teaching term and starting the late term this week. I'm traveling twice as far this term (3 hours as opposed to 1.5), but the flip side of that is no extra travel to sub. I'm also fortunate in that my uncle/godfather and his family live halfway between home and my teaching site, so they're letting me spend Saturday nights with them for the next 3 weeks. My new kids are, for the most part, great and I'm sure I'll have some fantastic stories from this term as well!

I have also done some grownup things in the last few weeks. I have:

-Made my first car payment and my first car insurance payment

-Found an apartment

-Set up an account with the electric company

-Sent out 20+ resumes

-Scheduled a job interview for the next school year

-Begun furniture shopping

And in doing all of these grownup things, I've realized something: freaking out doesn't get you anywhere. I'm notorious for getting some kind of awful pain somewhere before a big life change. In high school, it was migranes, the summer before college (and before senior year) it was a stomach ulcer... my stress about new situations seems to manifest itself in my body; this year, it started out as the carpal tunnel in my left wrist that comes and goes (apparently wrist pain is part of being an academic, at least in the humanities!). And then I came to the conclusion that freaking out was really unnecessary. As St. Augustine wrote, "pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you." That's what I've been doing lately and everything is working out. I'm in grad school, with some funding. I have a place to live and will most emphatically not be living in my car. I've even got a job prospect. All of the pieces are falling into place and I'm quite serene about the whole situation. To quote one of the famous medieval mystics, Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." Yes indeed, all is well